Attn MBAs, your job please

This article in the NY Times caught my eye for two reasons. First of all the mention of India, but moreover the area mentioned was the area I worked in. The city of Gurgon has really sprung up in the past 10 years as more and more multinational companies move to India. The city is really unbelievable with the mega malls and high rise buildings that keep popping up. It is like a mini America, one that has taken on all of the traits that make us inefficient both in time and energy consumption.

Going to work everyday there is a toll booth that separates the state of Delhi from Haryana just south of it. One thing that Indians don’t have down yet is waiting in line. They play a terrifying game of chicken with each other every morning and afternoon at the toll booths as each car tries to push the others out of the lanes. There are malls but they don’t really know what to do with them and then there are these high rise buildings, but getting there is impossible because there is no public transit that feeds this area. They didn’t think about the consequences of fitting a large number of people into a small area and not planning for the traffic that comes with this. There is no good way for people to take a public form of transit to the cluster of high rise buildings that now embody Gurgon and the roads are much too small for everyone to drive. This is further compounded by 9-5pm workdays that are neither staggered nor do they allow people to work from home, which would help both pollution and congestion problems as well as make people more efficient with their day.

So although the article shows companies continuing to outsource and move jobs abroad, they are brewing what looks to be a perfect storm. This could be a good thing though, because maybe India will start to change their work mentality as well as think about infrastructure before they just start to build.